Sometimes when things start to feel too easy for us, we think we’re not doing it right or not working hard enough. But maybe you’ve just hit your stride and are in “your zone”. Probably (hopefully), your ever increasing business experience is just making it feel easy.
There is new scientific research to support this phenomenon.
Because athletes often report that when they’re in the zone, motion seems to slow down and their targets seem closer and larger, Psychologist Jessica Witt of Purdue University created an experiment using 24 athletes. The non-football participants kicked a total of 10 field goals from a relatively easy distance. The kickers were asked to estimate the size of the goal posts before and after each of their attempts. The most successful participants perceived the goal posts to be 22% larger, and easier to reach, than those who repeatedly missed. But the successful kickers didn’t see their targets as larger and easier until after accomplishing the task. Success directly changed their perception of the difficulty of the kicks.
I have previously talked about the effects of positive self-talk, and this is an extension of that. Successful completion of a task stretches your boundaries. The proof of the “success” bias is a good reason to create steps that lead to bigger and bigger goals. With each accomplishment, your perception of what is attainable will adjust in the right direction, so start laying out your plan.
